Stupid is as stupid does. A significant portion of trucking accidents involve the truck driver missing a cue because they were mid gear change.
While it is good to have a person learn to drive stick, it is really hard to get people to learn how to drive if they have zero interest in actually learning how to be a driver, no matter what transmission.
I personally like dual clutch transmissions and daily’ed a car to 175k miles with one, yet I went out of my way to find a manual version of my current car.
Do you sing an aria by Mozart or something when you drive? But anyway, in my experience driving manual makes people more distracted because they have to think about gears and the clutch and stuff. Sure, a competent driver will not have any difficulty with that, but there’s an awful lot of them out there that don’t quite fall into that category.
You must not know how to drive a manual. When you know how to drive one, you don’t think about it. You just do it. You feel connected to the car and connected to the act of driving. Automatics absolutely allow people to go on autopilot and they focus on anything but driving: stuffing their face with food, browsing lemmy, texting, talking on their phone on speaker while holding it up to their mouth for some fucking reason even though it would be easier and better sound quality to just hold it up to their ear like phones were designed to be used, or you know, just use the fucking hands free phone calling that’s built into every fucking car that was made in the last decade and a half and included in every cheap ass aftermarket stereo system available on the planet
I’ve driven manual for over 30 years. Back in the day automatic transmissions were slow, clunky and inefficient. When I first tried modern one, I was instantly converted. Like, I also don’t want to manually adjust rotation speed on my washing machine, why would I do it in the car? Driving electric takes it to a whole new level. It just frees up mind share for concentrating on traffic. There’s no guarantee people will actually do that, of course. And if you think that things that are subconscious don’t take up mind share, you don’t know much about how the brain works. And if you think drivers on manual are less distracted, I have news for you too. I guess you live in the US, where driving manual is a choice. Here it’s mainly in cheaper, older cars which are driven by people who don’t much care about cars or driving.
I mean, I’ve driven only automatics my whole life, with the odd exception of a friend’s ATV or whatnot, but I know when and how to use an e brake (and/or dual foot the brake pedal and gas pedal) to start a car on an incline, when said car has an automatic transmission…
EDIT: Also, most automatics will let you attempt a rolling start in neutral… I’ve done this many times, either rolling downhill or having people push.
You’re not gonna uninvent automatic transmissions.
Assuming you’re American (I doubt a non American would name themselves ‘Boomer Humor’), what you could do is mandate people completely retest, written and driving tests, for their liscenses every 5 years, then every 2 years after some age cutoff (60? 65?) then every single year after another age cutoff (70? 75?)… instead of just assuming that because they passed the test once in their life, all their skills and knowledge are perfect and up to date for the rest of their lives.
Most people think they are much better drivers than they actually are, so lets actually reality check them on that.
I would be so happy if we had stringent driving tests like in Europe. Hell, I’d gladly be re-tested every year if it meant people knew which lane to use and what turn signals were for.
A big reason why I’m all for public transport is to get people off the road who shouldn’t be there in the first place so they’re out of my way when I’m driving.
Kind of like how I support new urbanism because it means less wilderness plowed under for suburbs, so I have more native habitat. I don’t want to live in a city, I just want most people to live in them so I can ve alone with my woodland friends.
“… get people off the road who shouldn’t be there in the first place…”
i get the sentiment but i think this is problematic.
who deserves the right to drive then?
i hear you, “people who are capable”.
but real life isn’t so cut and dry. the way it works in america now is awful fs, you can back this up with death statistics fairly easily; however, i think this tribalistic “us vs them” attitude drivers get is emblematic of deeper problems in our culture.
everyone is all for the animal farm until they’re the other. cliche, i know, but it’s true.
oh yeah, it’s surely a privilege to be allowed to participate in society.
the argument “driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege” falls entirely flat on its face when there exist no alternatives for a large majority of people and their lives. hardcore boomer energy that blatantly ignores the reality on the ground.
i agree, there are people who shouldn’t drive. i wish i didn’t have to drive.
that simply isn’t feasible in the current reality, tho.
driving can once again be a privilege only after it returns to no longer being a necessity. it is the natural right of all peoples to participate in their society. i agree with the sentiment, driving is a privilege that should be earned. but we should do ground work to make that true, we can’t just ignore the real world and indignantly say whatever we feel like; real life isn’t harry potter and the symbols and words we create bare no direct power over reality. driving is not a privilege in todays america, you don’t get to be the arbiter of decision here. in a practical sense, driving is necessary. the right to transportation and movement evolves with the age, man; it doesn’t get narrower as time goes on in the way a lot of western law seems to want to imply nowadays.
This source doesn’t go up to 2024, but only fairly recently have guns killed more Americans than cars, each year, and the overall numbers aren’t too far off.
Cars certainly cause far more property damage than guns.
Anyone in a car is easily capable of killing another human being or doing them massive injury.
I agree with you that there are many more pervasive and complex issues … driving (sorry) Americans to be dangerous irresponsible drivers…
But cars are deadly weapons, whether driven as such intentionally or unintentionally.
Maybe people should be more stringently screened and qualified before they are allowed and trusted to regularly use them.
For the record, I think you shouldn’t be able to own a firearm without having gone through a certification course, but as it stands right now, only 10 US states require that.
Yeah, and all the morons from the Midwest stick their thumbs in their belt loops and insist that they really know how to drive in the snow, don’cha know, not like you coastal people.
And yet there isn’t a single guardrail anywhere in Minnesota that hasn’t got a Chevy Suburban shoved halfway through it.
That would be especially funny coming from a Minnesotan aimed at … at least myself, as a Seattleite.
For starters: It almost never seriously snows in Seattle, so we don’t have anywhere near as good an infrastructure for clearing snow.
Not saying the average Seattleite is adept at snow driving… but… Seattle has A LOT of steep hills.
I’m reasonably confident Minnesota is as flat as a pancake in comparison.
(Checked. MN’s tallest ‘mountain’ is 2300 feet. WA’s is 14,000. Their ‘mountain’ is unironically what I would call a big hill. WA has almost 150 mountains taller than 2000 feet, by relative geographical prominence, not absolute height)
A fairly small amount of snow, especially if it can be cold long enough to freeze into ice, and you’re looking at something like 30 to 40% of Seattle’s roads being either insanely dangerous, or roads that are cutoff by said chokepoints.
I’m talking 18% to 22% grade.
Apparently the steepest road in Minneapolis is ‘nearly’ 15%.
-.-
That is why a foot of snow basically shuts down Seattle.
Now… going further…
If you live in the PNW and actually try to see all the sights… aka, leave Seattle…
Well you hit the fucking Cascade mountains, where it often snows considerably, the foothills have tons of smaller cities and rural communities with garbage tier snaking roads of extreme grade, and on the east side of the state, they get massive snow dumps all the time, though it is much more flat.
So if you’ve actually driven or lived around a good deal of WA… you’ve probably had to encounter a lot more difficult snow conditions than an average MidWest driver.
As a classically trained driver I’ve found automatics make people drive worse because they have to think less. And they already barely think.
Stupid is as stupid does. A significant portion of trucking accidents involve the truck driver missing a cue because they were mid gear change.
While it is good to have a person learn to drive stick, it is really hard to get people to learn how to drive if they have zero interest in actually learning how to be a driver, no matter what transmission.
I personally like dual clutch transmissions and daily’ed a car to 175k miles with one, yet I went out of my way to find a manual version of my current car.
Manual occupies their phone hand. How is someone supposed to heart content so the algorithm gives them more of it!
Using the PRiNDle opens one up for so many activities.
Would you like AMMMMM or FMMMMM?
What the fuck is a “classically trained driver”?
He was taught by the same institute that taught Beethoven to drift.
Grand staff drifting
Wow, was that playable?
To Beethoven and no one else probably
like going to a prestigious school for drivers? julihart for driving?
Didn’t go to one of those lousy postmodern driving schools I think
Like Robert Wells or Bill Nye.
Mom took him to a big office building parking lot on a Sunday when it was quiet. At least that’s how this classically trained driver learned.
I’ve actually observed the opposite. Automatics leave more brain cells to focus on traffic.
“Self driving” cars on the other hand…
They use them to focus on their phones, not the road
That’s just a type of driver though. They come in all transmissions.
Do you sing an aria by Mozart or something when you drive? But anyway, in my experience driving manual makes people more distracted because they have to think about gears and the clutch and stuff. Sure, a competent driver will not have any difficulty with that, but there’s an awful lot of them out there that don’t quite fall into that category.
You must not know how to drive a manual. When you know how to drive one, you don’t think about it. You just do it. You feel connected to the car and connected to the act of driving. Automatics absolutely allow people to go on autopilot and they focus on anything but driving: stuffing their face with food, browsing lemmy, texting, talking on their phone on speaker while holding it up to their mouth for some fucking reason even though it would be easier and better sound quality to just hold it up to their ear like phones were designed to be used, or you know, just use the fucking hands free phone calling that’s built into every fucking car that was made in the last decade and a half and included in every cheap ass aftermarket stereo system available on the planet
I’ve driven manual for over 30 years. Back in the day automatic transmissions were slow, clunky and inefficient. When I first tried modern one, I was instantly converted. Like, I also don’t want to manually adjust rotation speed on my washing machine, why would I do it in the car? Driving electric takes it to a whole new level. It just frees up mind share for concentrating on traffic. There’s no guarantee people will actually do that, of course. And if you think that things that are subconscious don’t take up mind share, you don’t know much about how the brain works. And if you think drivers on manual are less distracted, I have news for you too. I guess you live in the US, where driving manual is a choice. Here it’s mainly in cheaper, older cars which are driven by people who don’t much care about cars or driving.
You’re wrong
No I let my exhaust do the singing. It’s like playing a really simple pipe organ.
Now think about how much worse they would drive if they had to switch their concentration from the road to the transmission.
Only just noticed Your username. For a moment I thought You were serious.
If I was serious I’d say no human is sane enough to drive.
I mean, I’ve driven only automatics my whole life, with the odd exception of a friend’s ATV or whatnot, but I know when and how to use an e brake (and/or dual foot the brake pedal and gas pedal) to start a car on an incline, when said car has an automatic transmission…
EDIT: Also, most automatics will let you attempt a rolling start in neutral… I’ve done this many times, either rolling downhill or having people push.
You’re not gonna uninvent automatic transmissions.
Assuming you’re American (I doubt a non American would name themselves ‘Boomer Humor’), what you could do is mandate people completely retest, written and driving tests, for their liscenses every 5 years, then every 2 years after some age cutoff (60? 65?) then every single year after another age cutoff (70? 75?)… instead of just assuming that because they passed the test once in their life, all their skills and knowledge are perfect and up to date for the rest of their lives.
Most people think they are much better drivers than they actually are, so lets actually reality check them on that.
I would be so happy if we had stringent driving tests like in Europe. Hell, I’d gladly be re-tested every year if it meant people knew which lane to use and what turn signals were for.
Honestly, thats great to hear.
American car-centric culture is literally directly killing people, killing the environment, killing our ability to design cities and public transit…
You’d think the least we could do is be competent at driving.
But fucking nope, not a chance.
I used to live in Seattle.
Almost no one understands that in significant rain, you need to double your following distance.
Still fucking baffles me to this day. Rain City people don’t know how to drive… in the rain.
A big reason why I’m all for public transport is to get people off the road who shouldn’t be there in the first place so they’re out of my way when I’m driving.
Kind of like how I support new urbanism because it means less wilderness plowed under for suburbs, so I have more native habitat. I don’t want to live in a city, I just want most people to live in them so I can ve alone with my woodland friends.
i get the sentiment but i think this is problematic.
who deserves the right to drive then?
i hear you, “people who are capable”. but real life isn’t so cut and dry. the way it works in america now is awful fs, you can back this up with death statistics fairly easily; however, i think this tribalistic “us vs them” attitude drivers get is emblematic of deeper problems in our culture.
everyone is all for the animal farm until they’re the other. cliche, i know, but it’s true.
Driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. And we determine who can drive by testing them to see if they know and will follow the rules.
Plus the old dude I saw today with shaking hands and an oxygen tube in his nose deserves to have an alternative where he won’t kill himself or others.
oh yeah, it’s surely a privilege to be allowed to participate in society.
the argument “driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege” falls entirely flat on its face when there exist no alternatives for a large majority of people and their lives. hardcore boomer energy that blatantly ignores the reality on the ground.
i agree, there are people who shouldn’t drive. i wish i didn’t have to drive.
that simply isn’t feasible in the current reality, tho.
driving can once again be a privilege only after it returns to no longer being a necessity. it is the natural right of all peoples to participate in their society. i agree with the sentiment, driving is a privilege that should be earned. but we should do ground work to make that true, we can’t just ignore the real world and indignantly say whatever we feel like; real life isn’t harry potter and the symbols and words we create bare no direct power over reality. driving is not a privilege in todays america, you don’t get to be the arbiter of decision here. in a practical sense, driving is necessary. the right to transportation and movement evolves with the age, man; it doesn’t get narrower as time goes on in the way a lot of western law seems to want to imply nowadays.
People get their licenses revoked all the time. It is currently a privilege and has been for a while.
I think their point is that there should be viable alternatives.
Death statistics?
https://everytownresearch.org/graph/gun-death-vs-motor-vehicle-accident-deaths-since-1999/
This source doesn’t go up to 2024, but only fairly recently have guns killed more Americans than cars, each year, and the overall numbers aren’t too far off.
Cars certainly cause far more property damage than guns.
Anyone in a car is easily capable of killing another human being or doing them massive injury.
I agree with you that there are many more pervasive and complex issues … driving (sorry) Americans to be dangerous irresponsible drivers…
But cars are deadly weapons, whether driven as such intentionally or unintentionally.
Maybe people should be more stringently screened and qualified before they are allowed and trusted to regularly use them.
For the record, I think you shouldn’t be able to own a firearm without having gone through a certification course, but as it stands right now, only 10 US states require that.
https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/law/training-required-to-purchase-guns/
All states require you complete a certification for concealed carry… but you don’t need that to legally buy and possess a gun.
Yeah, and all the morons from the Midwest stick their thumbs in their belt loops and insist that they really know how to drive in the snow, don’cha know, not like you coastal people.
And yet there isn’t a single guardrail anywhere in Minnesota that hasn’t got a Chevy Suburban shoved halfway through it.
That would be especially funny coming from a Minnesotan aimed at … at least myself, as a Seattleite.
For starters: It almost never seriously snows in Seattle, so we don’t have anywhere near as good an infrastructure for clearing snow.
Not saying the average Seattleite is adept at snow driving… but… Seattle has A LOT of steep hills.
I’m reasonably confident Minnesota is as flat as a pancake in comparison.
(Checked. MN’s tallest ‘mountain’ is 2300 feet. WA’s is 14,000. Their ‘mountain’ is unironically what I would call a big hill. WA has almost 150 mountains taller than 2000 feet, by relative geographical prominence, not absolute height)
A fairly small amount of snow, especially if it can be cold long enough to freeze into ice, and you’re looking at something like 30 to 40% of Seattle’s roads being either insanely dangerous, or roads that are cutoff by said chokepoints.
I’m talking 18% to 22% grade.
Apparently the steepest road in Minneapolis is ‘nearly’ 15%.
-.-
That is why a foot of snow basically shuts down Seattle.
Now… going further…
If you live in the PNW and actually try to see all the sights… aka, leave Seattle…
Well you hit the fucking Cascade mountains, where it often snows considerably, the foothills have tons of smaller cities and rural communities with garbage tier snaking roads of extreme grade, and on the east side of the state, they get massive snow dumps all the time, though it is much more flat.
So if you’ve actually driven or lived around a good deal of WA… you’ve probably had to encounter a lot more difficult snow conditions than an average MidWest driver.
I’ve driven through Snoqualmie Pass in the snow. Much of Wyoming, also. Yeah, midwesterners have no concept. They just think they do.